When I read I Sold My Soul on eBay, I couldn’t help but think that the information Hemant provided just wasn’t going to be very helpful to those churches. It’s like the Christians involved are missing the whole point. They think we don’t like their churches because they aren’t attractive or inviting enough. They don’t seem to get that we don’t believe what they teach, and that’s the core problem.

That beats the old “churches rate themselves to be great” problem that they used to have.

Well, that’s still happening, but people are also posting ratings and comments that are more, shall we say, balanced?

These churches could just hang on to the money if regular churchgoers had the guts to tell their pastors what they didn’t like about church — what they found offensive or untrue or disingenuous.

This doesn’t really make much sense. With very few exceptions, most Christians have the ability to “church shop”. Most regular churchgoers at a particular church aren’t going to churches that they don’t like – if they didn’t like it they’d stop going and go somewhere else. Finding out why people who aren’t going to your church don’t like it is good market research that your regular attendees aren’t going to be able to do for you no matter how deeply you probe them – whatever annoys the people who don’t go to your church clearly doesn’t annoy them enough for it to matter to them. Heck something that turns off 90% of the visitors that walk through the door of your church may be the very thing that keeps the regulars coming back week after week.

Actually that hasn’t been my experience, Jer. Most regular attenders at church have some things they like and others they don’t like about their church. They could be asked for constructive criticism. And it often takes a lot to push an attender to the point they’ll leave, so it’s quite possible churches might have somewhat disgruntled attenders. And if anyone wants a church to improve it’s those who attend and feel some loyalty, so they would be great people to ask for feedback.

I plan to link to it on my little blog if there is no objection.

I can’t resist sharing the notion that unbelievers view the church as a business. So many of our churches have fallen into that category for so long, we deserve the criticism.

I think it’s a fine idea. There’s no reason why those institutions should be immune to criticism.

I hope that this is a change for the better. As much as I think churches are a horrible waste of time I am well aware that they aren’t for me. If Christians want to have the best clubhouse then they should rate them fairly and honestly. That way other people who are interested get to see something that is less biased than the usual advertising material. It’s no different from rating a pub, a restaurant or a golf club.

…Except they pay taxes.

Looking through the reviews, that is exactly what is happening. Most of the reviews are 4-5 star ratings from Christians who rated the church they attend. I don’t see many non-christian reviews.